Monday, July 23, 2012

Due
to the hard work of activists, increasing attention is being paid to the epidemic of police harassment, profiling,
brutalizing, and often murder of young Black and Latino men, who in cities like
New York are stopped at rates greater than eight times their representation in
the overall population. Last week, a special report by Human Rights Watch (HRW)
shed light on another group targeted by the police: sex workers and those who
police think “look like” sex workers, often transgender women.

HRW’s
report points out an absurd and dangerous contradiction: while city health departments hand
out tens of millions of free condoms each year, proven to prevent the spread of
HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases, city police departments are using
the possession of condoms as evidence against those at some of the highest risk
for HIV and other STDs: sex workers.

A
study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that 14%
of male and 10% of female sex workers in the city are HIV-positive, compared
with 1.4% citywide.

The
law in many places, including New York State, both prohibits prostitution and
is vague enough in its definition of related offenses that HRW considers it “problematic from
a human rights perspective, in that [the laws regarding loitering] grant police
wide latitude to engage in unjustified interference with lawful activities
short of actual solicitation [for prostitution]. Such laws enable arbitrary and
preemptive arrests on the basis of profile or status, rather than criminal
conduct.”

In other words, police have free
rein to stop-and-frisk those they believe to be sex workers, and can then
arrest them if they find condoms on them, and use that as evidence in charges
for prostitution. This is a recipe for widespread profiling on the basis of
race, clothing and gender identity.

And it amounts to punishing sex workers and others for taking steps to protect their health and that of their partners.

By
using possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution, and harassing and
arresting suspected sex workers on this basis, the police are contributing to
the HIV/AIDS epidemic as many sex workers have stopped carrying condoms, or do
not carry enough.

Anna
E., a sex worker, told HRW: “Am I afraid to carry condoms? Yes I was for a long
time. When I was working on the street, I felt like I could only carry two or
three, not a lot when I went out…”

Alexa
L. said: “I
use condoms. I take a lot of care of myself. But the police affect our ability to
carry them. Sometimes I’m afraid and have not used them. I am very worried
about my health.”

HIV
is not the only danger. STDs such as Chlamydia, which if undetected can lead to
infertility, and HPV, which can cause cervical cancer, are much easier to
spread and can cause permanent damage and even death.

As
the report shows, the harassment of sex workers and those perceived by police
to be sex workers on the basis of condom possession is just the tip of the
iceberg. For sex workers and transgender women, who are frequently profiled by
police as being sex workers, contact with the police often means verbal and
physical abuse (including rape), extortion, fines, and for undocumented
immigrants, deportation.

-----------------------------------------------------

The
criminalization and stigmatization of sex work, which is illegal in 49 US
states, provides the context (and an important pretext) for police abuse and harassment.

In
general, sex work is not by any means a victimless phenomenon. Millions of
women, including young girls are the victims of sex trafficking, kidnapped and
forced into sex work or sex slavery, their earnings enriching organized crime
syndicates who terrorize and brutalize their victims.

Others
are compelled by discrimination and economic necessity to engage in sex work
when they otherwise would choose not to. This is especially the case for
transgender women. A survey by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality found that 16% of transgender
respondents had been forced to engage in sex work and/or sell drugs or other
illegal activities for survival purposes. This is as a result of widespread
discrimination against transgender people, who face incredibly elevated rates
of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment.

However,
it’s important to note that there are sex workers who choose to engage in sex
work as freely as anyone else chooses to work a job under capitalism.

Sex
workers themselves are organizing for decriminalization, and should be supported.
Beyond that, arguments in favor of criminalization as a way to protect sex
workers fall apart when one looks at who is charged with enforcing the laws,
and what are the actual outcomes of enforcement of laws banning anti-prostitution.

The
HRW report points out that in 2011, the NYPD made just over four thousand prostitution-related
arrests. Of these, 64% were arrests of alleged sex workers (for “prostitution”
or “loitering for prostitution”), and 29% were arrests of “johns” who patronize
them. Just 35 arrests were made for sex trafficking (0.9%), and 6 for
compelling prostitution (0.1%).

Sex
workers themselves are the target of nearly two-thirds of all arrests, and like
the war on drugs, the vast majority of arrests are for “street-level” crimes,
while the pimps and sex traffickers for the most part go free, making up just
1% of prostitution-related arrests.

Rather
than protecting sex workers, an encounter with police is often likely to lead
to victimization and abuse. Police frequently commit crimes against sex workers
that are far worse than the misdemeanor charge they arrest them for.

A fact sheet by INCITE! entitled “Policing Sex Work” points out that a “2002 study
found that 30% of exotic dancers and 24% of street-based sex workers who had
been raped identified a police officer as the rapist. Approximately 20 % of other
acts of sexual violence reported by study participants were committed by the
police…extortion of sexual acts in exchange for avoiding arrest or further
violence, public strip searches, physical violence, as well as overtly sexist,
homophobic, racist and transphobic verbal abuse of sex workers by police officers
are an all too common experiences for indoor and street-based sex workers.”

Sexism
and transphobia intersect with racism in such a way that Black and Latina sex
workers, especially transgender women, face the highest rates of abuse and
brutality at the hands of the police.

According to the NGLTF report, 38% of Black transgender people who have encountered police reported having been harassed by police, 15% were physically assaulted, and 7% were sexually assaulted.

And
undocumented immigrants face the added fear of deportation following an arrest,
especially given the implementation of “Secure Communities,” which involves
increase cooperation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) officials.

The
HRW report confirms this. Brenda D. told HRW that:

“I went into a
car with a person. He said he was a police officer and said ‘if you help me I’ll
help you.’ He said he wanted oral sex. He showed me a badge. He said if I didn’t
have oral sex with him he would call the police and arrest me for prostitution.”

Tara
A., a transgender woman, told HRW about her experience following an arrest:

“I spent 24 hours
in Central Booking in Queens. Just 24 hours in hell…you have to go in an area
with men. It’s not just being arrested…men were insulting me, saying ‘faggot.’
I felt discriminated when they took my fingerprints, they put on gloves, like
they were disgusted. They made fun of me, the police officers. Sometimes I’d
walk by the men and they’d say ‘you’re pretty.’ The police officer would say ‘she’s
not a woman, she’s a man.’"

The
criminalization of sex work, and the stigmatization attached to it, means that
sex workers live in the shadows, in fear of exposing the abuse they face,
whether from the police or from johns, pimps or sex traffickers.
Decriminalization would not solve all of the problems facing sex workers, but
it is a precondition for them to win meaningful rights as workers.

-----------------------------------------------------

The
realities exposed by HRW’s report illuminate another important point: conquering
the HIV epidemic is not just a matter of handing out free condoms or educating
people on how to have safe sex. Although these are important steps, deeper
institutional and societal change is needed.

Dealing
with the HIV epidemic requires addressing the factors (unemployment, poverty,
homelessness, legal and de facto discrimination, transphobia, sexism, etc.)
that force people to put themselves at risk in order to survive.

It
is going to take the self-organization of the oppressed, in this case sex
workers and transgender women, joining forces with others (such as the broader
Black and Latino communities) who are also targeted by the police.

And
ultimately it will require the dismantling of the racist, sexist, anti-LGBT,
and xenophobic system of mass incarceration of which the routine harassment of
small-time “offenders” like drug users and sex workers is simply a gateway to a
lifetime of second-class status.

These
are all goals we should keep in mind, but we are a long way from achieving
that. For now, the growing movement against racial profiling and brutality
should stand with sex workers and transgender victims of police brutality.

Walking
around with a pack of condoms (or a dime bag of weed) should not mean risking
being targeted, humiliated, and/or brutalized by those supposedly charged to “protect
and serve.”

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Most people reading this are probably aware by now that
Comedian Daniel Tosh, who hosts the Tosh.0
show on Comedy Central, has been under fire recently for a rape joke he made while
onstage at the Laugh Factory comedy club.

The account of the woman targeted by Tosh was posted on the
Cookies for Breakfast Tumblr, here.

It’s worth quoting the woman’s account at length:

So Tosh then starts making some very generalizing,
declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke
not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc. I don’t know why he was so repetitive
about it but I felt provoked because I, for one, DON’T find them funny and
never have. So I didn’t appreciate Daniel Tosh (or anyone!) telling me I should
find them funny. So I yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!”

I did it because, even though being “disruptive” is against
my nature, I felt that sitting there and saying nothing, or leaving quietly,
would have been against my values as a person and as a woman. I don’t sit there
while someone tells me how I should feel about something as profound and
damaging as rape.

After I called out to him, Tosh paused for a moment. Then,
he says, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right
now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…” and I, completely
stunned and finding it hard to process what was happening but knowing I needed
to get out of there, immediately nudged my friend, who was also completely
stunned, and we high-tailed it out of there. It was humiliating, of course,
especially as the audience guffawed in response to Tosh, their eyes following
us as we made our way out of there. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said
about me.

Since then there have been calls for Tosh to be fired from
his job at Comedy Central, including a petition on Change.org that has garnered
nearly 20,000 signatures as of this writing.

Tosh issued a mealy-mouthed apology, tweeting “all the out
of context misquotes aside, I’d like to sincerely apologize,” and an
explanation that “the point I was making before I was heckled is there are
awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them. #deadbabies.”

I’m sure that in the coming days more people will come forward
with accounts of what it was exactly that Tosh said about rape, gang rape, and
what he thinks should’ve been done to the woman who called him out for his
sexist jokes. Maybe someone was taking video.

I’m not going to write about that here, because at the end
of the day I don’t think that the case against Daniel Tosh rests on what
exactly was or wasn’t said the other night at the Laugh Factory. However, if in
fact Tosh, jokingly or not, called for the gang rape of a woman in the audience
at his comedy show, I believe that he crossed a new line, far beyond even the
one he has repeatedly crossed in terms of joking about rape.

In that case a petition is a step in the right direction,
but more protest is in order. I’m sure that those who organized the Slutwalks,
and others, can think of creative ways to ensure that Tosh, and those who give
him a platform, get the message that advocating or making light of rape will
not be tolerated.

This is not an isolated incident. As Amy Odell points out atBuzzFeed, “Daniel Tosh has been making rape jokes for years.” Not only that, but
in a particularly fucked up segment on his show, he encouraged men to sneak up
on women and touch their stomachs without their consent, telling them to “Make sure she's aware that you are in fact
feeling a roll.”

Fans of Tosh, who are disproportionately young men (and millions
of people watch his show), then went out and did just that, posting their
videos online.

Not only was Tosh encouraging his fans to assault women
(which they then did), but the whole basis of the “joke” was making fun of
women’s issues with low self-esteem and poor body image, a product of a sexist
society that upholds unrealistic beauty standards that encourage women (and
more recently some men) to hate their bodies.

Tosh, a straight white man, has made a (lucrative) career
out of making sexist (as well as racist and homophobic) jokes, with a hit TV
show and stand-up success, particularly on the college circuit.

He has claimed that while he is “not a misogynistic and
racist person…I do find those jokes funny, so I say them.”

Whether Tosh the private individual is sexist or racist is
irrelevant when Tosh the public figure is profiting off of sexism and racism.

(As an aside, George Wallace, the staunch segregationist,
was not always the racist icon he would later become. In 1958 he was endorsed
by the NAACP in his run for the Democratic nomination for governor in Alabama,
against a racist endorsed by the KKK, who Wallace had opposed. After losing,
Wallace ratcheted up the racist rhetoric and rose to prominence, stating that “I
will never be outniggered again.”)

Regardless of Tosh’s personal views, his sexist act has a
real impact on the world, one he should be held accountable for. Of course, the
men who filmed themselves touching women inappropriately, and a rapist who
watches Tosh.0 or another sexist
show, are responsible for their actions. But it’s also the case that sexists
are not created in a vacuum; they are products of a sexist society, the sexism
of which pop culture plays an important role in reproducing.

Rape is very common in our society, especially among college
students, who have long been a key component of Tosh's audience. Various
studies have shown that between 20-25% of women in college will be the victim
of rape or attempted rape, most often by someone they know. Obviously, a
culture where rape (and the importance of women’s consent in sex) is not taken
seriously contributes to this epidemic.

So this whole controversy is about a lot more than whether
or not you think rape is funny. The question is, does Tosh’s humor contribute
to rape culture, or does it meaningfully challenge it?

Unless Tosh challenging it (and it seems pretty clear that
he isn’t in any substantial way), he deserves to be challenged for profiting
from it.

Tosh is not an idiot. He must know that a big segment of his
audience consists of men who have and will rape women. Anyone who has been to a
few college parties knows that when a popular comedian plays a show in front of
a large audience at a college, there are going to be people in the audience who
will go to a party that night with the intent of getting a woman blackout drunk
so they can rape her. By profiting off of warming these men up with a set full
of rape jokes, Tosh is contributing to a culture that allows rape to thrive.

Finally, I should note that I’m actually a fan of stand-up comedy.
I do think that jokes about taboo subjects can be funny. Actually, I think that
humor can be a way of using art to positively engage a broad audience on issues
of race and class (Dave Chapelle and George Carlin come to mind).

For example, I laughed at this routine about racism by
Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani. It's funny because it's clever, but also because the
comedian is talking about their experience as a VICTIM of racism, and the racist/racism
is the butt of the joke. It does more to undermine racism than it does to
promote it. I haven't heard a similar rape joke, but I'd imagine it'd be
possible for a female comedian to pull something off along similar lines.

Or this bit from Dave Chapelle, that takes on the issue of
slavery. I find it hilarious, and I don’t think it’s offensive
because he is using humor to expose the hypocrisy of the United States
government, both in the past and today.

The problem with Tosh telling sexist (or racist, homophobic,
etc.) jokes is that he is a rich, straight white guy who is telling these jokes not to challenge oppression, but to profit from it. When he makes light of
raping women, he's making light of something that he cannot in any way identify with (and thereby shed some light on) in a way that does more to promote rape than challenge it.

He is not the target of rape, and he can't identify on a
personal level with those who are, nor is that what he's attempting to do. He,
as well as the young men who make up the core of his audience, have no idea
what it’s like to face sexist harassment every day when they walk down the
street, or go to school or work. The vast majority have no idea what it’s like
to be raped, or to live in fear of rape when they go on a date or walk down the
street or across campus at night.

So instead of dismissing the woman who called Tosh out for
his sexism as a “heckler” and joking about gang raping her, Tosh should listen
to the women (and men) who are outraged by his violent sexist “jokes” and try
to see things from their perspective.

And until he does, wouldn’t it be hilarious if supporters of
women and women’s rights make sure (through a mic check, perhaps?) gets the
message loud and clear, wherever he goes? And put it online?

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The global youth revolt has helped to topple regimes
in North Africa, and has shaken the 1% all over, most recently in Montreal and
Mexico. From struggles against dictators in North Africa and the Middle East to
battles over the right to education in the Americas and Europe to strikes by
young workers against sweatshop conditions in Chinese factories to struggles
against austerity and the power of the banks in Europe and the United States, the
youth are rising.

I don’t have a crystal ball, and one wouldn’t help
me if I did, but I’m willing to bet that when the history books are written, at
least those written by our side, a rejection of the status quo and the will to
fight for a better world will be defining characteristics of a generation of young
people coming of age in a world that offers them little hope of a future.

Not so, according to the folks at 1flesh.org, who
claim that “if anything can be
said of our generation, it’s this:We want sexy back.”

1flesh.org,
a slick website that dubs itself “the revolt against contraception in marriage”
(complete with the Ron Paul-esque use of a backwards ‘love’ in ‘revolt’) is an
absurd yet dangerous attempt to tap into this rebellious spirit in order to
promote monogamous sex, without contraception, within the context of marriage.

Basically,
they use slick web design and graphics based off of internet memes to promote
pseudo-science that blames contraception and sex without marriage for all that is
wrong in our sexual lives (and then some).

According
to 1flesh.org, raw dogging it is the solution to all of the problems that
distort sexual relationships in our society. You see, they, “a group of college
kids,” have “narrowed all
the wackness down to its primary cause: The widespread use of artificial
contraception.”

The “wackness”
consists of “sky-high rates of divorce, abortion, and STDs; a world bored with
sex and bored with romance; a world in which more and more people are turning
to pornography to find sexual satisfaction; a world in which 1 in 5 women
report being sexual assaulted, and the human body — the sexiest thing in the
universe — is used to sell cars.”

They’re
right about some things: STDs are indeed “wack” (in that they can have significant negative impacts on health and disproportionately affect poor people, women, LGBT people, youth, and people of color), millions of people are
sexually and romantically unfulfilled, the bulk of the porn that’s out there is
sexist, degrading and exploitative, and sexual assault and the objectification
of women and the commodification of sex is fucked and needs to be changed.

(An aside:
if you can overlook the sinister for a bit, the site, stuck in a time warp
where kids think Justin Timberlake is cool, call things “wack”, and think it’s
fun to “freak out your grandma” with your advocacy of barebacking,
will elicit more than a few chuckles.)

However,
divorce and abortion, as well as access to contraception, are all gains of
struggles for women’s rights that should be defended.

First,
take divorce. Rising divorce rates can be, and often are, viewed as evidence
that today’s marriages are somehow getting worse, as opposed to those from the supposedly idyllic 1950s when most people lived happily ever after. You know, when popular television shows featured jokes about domestic violence as their tag line ("one of these days...to the moon!").

More likely, they reflect a reality where the entrance of women into the
workplace and the social and political gains of the women’s and LGBT rights
struggles of the 1960s and 1970s (and since) has allowed more women to escape
abusive marriages they would previously have been trapped in. And the reduced
stigma of divorce has allowed unhappy couples to split without facing social
isolation.

Divorce
is still an unnecessarily complicated and expensive procedure in the United
States and in many countries around the world. For example, it was only in
2010, with the passage of a law in New York State, that no-fault divorces became available in all 50 states.

Rising
divorce rates are better seen as evidence that the institution of monogamous
heterosexual marriage is not a positive norm that everyone should aspire to. It
might work for some, but over the past few decades more and more people have
found themselves newly able to escape it and have jumped ship or avoided
marriage altogether. A central component of struggles for LGBT and women’s liberation
is the right to live outside of the heterosexual nuclear family if one so
chooses.

Secondly,
access to abortion and contraception are essential for women to control their
reproductive lives, and by extension their own bodies. If women do not have
access to abortion and contraception, they cannot control if and when they have
children. And given the fact that the burden of raising children still falls
disproportionately on women, as well as the obvious (they’re the ones who carry
the fetus for 9 months or so, which any woman who has ever been pregnant will
tell you is no simple feat), if women cannot control reproduction they cannot
participate as equals to men in society. Reproductive freedom is not sufficient
for women’s liberation, but it’s certainly necessary.

Behind
all of their rhetoric about “rebellion” and “[starting] a revolution,” at the
core of what 1flesh.org is advocating is the turning back of key components of women’s
rights.

And,
although the site is far from open about its religious motivations,
1flesh.org is the project of Marc Barnes, a popular Catholic anti-abortion and
contraception blogger who goes by the name “Bad Catholic.”

He
promotes a kinder, gentler, hipper sexism: “Towards
abortion doctors, nurses, and clinicians, we must couple our anger with sadness
-like a father who learns his teenage daughter is sleeping around. Anger
without sadness is not love.”

Barnes
is a talented young man with what I believe to be a profoundly sexist world
view that he justifies using religion. Barnes, with his attacks on Planned
Parenthood (which he accuses of promoting “gendercide”) and groups like
Catholics for Choice, is clearly a soldier in the war on women.

Still don’t
believe that Barnes is a sexist pig? Check out his blog post “Why Cougars Scare the Living Crap Out of Me,” a Panglossian nightmare that seemingly attributes
the beauty of young women to their capacity to reproduce and that of older
women to their ability to hug their grandchildren.

Then
there is his blog post on 1flesh,
“9 Reasons Ovulation is Pretty Much Witchcraft,”where he feels the need to issue this disclaimer before going on to attempt to
express his admiration for women (which he bases on their ability to ovulate,
again reducing women to the ability to reproduce): “I’m a dude. Being such, I’ve always had a rather inflated
opinion of myself when it comes to the battle of the sexes. (I just find it
difficult to believe that anything can approach the beauty of being able to
effectively pee while standing up.)”

The
post has to be read in full to appreciate how obnoxious it is, but this gem
stands out: “Women’s
self-esteem takes a dip when they’re ovulating — they’re much more aware of
guys looking at them. (We are, by the way, and it’s your fault. You just went
through a magical, good-smelling, better-looking, sweeter-sounding,
space-time-warping sorcery. What in all hell else are we supposed to
be looking at?)”

Did I
mention he opposes gay marriage? And masturbation?

While
1flesh.org may seem too ridiculous to take seriously, it is part of a backlash
against women’s rights that stretches back to the heyday of the women’s rights
movement (for example, the Hyde Amendment, which denies women federal funding
for abortion, was passed just three years after Roe v. Wade). This is a backlash
thatcontinues to pose a real and growing threat
and will only be defeated with a revival of a grassroots movement that demands
women’s liberation.

And they pose a threat not just to women, but to all
of us who are sexually active.

As Katie J.M. Baker pointed out in Jezebel’s takedown of 1flesh: “Groups like
1flesh love to blabber on about how contraception success
statistics are bullshit because people don't know how to use condoms
properly, but they always ignore the oft-proven fact that abstinence-only
education — the idea that it's oh-so-simple to wait until marriage —DOES
NOT WORK AT ALL. And that's why the movement is more than a laughable
attempt to make antiquated notions of sexuality relevant. 1flesh should be held
accountable for more than its lameness.”

While Mr. Barnes may have good intentions (emphasis on "may"), at best he lives
in a dream world where people will be convinced by clever internet memes to
abandon masturbation, condoms, birth control, and abortion, wait to have sex until
marriage, and then live happily ever after in holy, monogamous, heterosexualmatrimony.

Here on planet Earth, human beings who are denied
sex education and access to condoms have unprotected sex and become infected
with STDs, including HIV. Women denied access to birth control and abortion seek
to terminate their unwanted pregnancies in back alleys and die by the tens of
thousands as a result.